Picnic in a Pot
Getting dinner. Photo: Author
When I talk or write about veggie gardening, I often get wistful comments from folks who don’t have room or time for a full-bore garden patch. Grow something in a pot, I suggest. But I suspect they think a couple of pots isn’t worth the effort. They want a garden that will feed the family, but sustenance isn’t always about quantity.
Last week, my family and I left Austin to play and visit family in Boston. My hub’s cousin has three pots on her deck full of basil, mint and arugula. To prepare for our picnic dinner, she invited my boys to go out and bring in the mini-harvest. They were quite enthusiastic. They even stopped talking about Pokemon.
In the kitchen, the boys helped clean and chop the arugula and herbs to add to a chicken salad and a watermelon salad. Hurricanehead washed mint leaves while Rocketboy and his cousin had a grand time imagining a man named Basil eating basil in Basel. Their great-great-aunt worked alongside them on a tomato-and-cheese dish. The dinner was delicious and truly homemade.
We don’t get to see our Boston relations very often, and the memories my sons made with them last week centered around those three pots of herbs, kitchen conversation and the picnic that followed. We could have opened a plastic bag, I guess, but it wouldn’t have been the same. That little container garden is worth the effort.
